Commercial watering systems (e.g., residential sprinkler systems) deliver water to an area relatively indiscriminately. This often leads to under- or over-watering. This can also lead to flooding of the watered area or, if the area is porous, to insufficient amounts of water being delivered to the area. Some systems address this problem by placing the watering system on a programmed timer, whereby different regions of the watered area receive water for different durations of time.
It has been proposed to use wireless sensors (e.g., soil moisture sensors) to monitor an environment and then use information detected by the sensors to water the environment in an automated fashion. Typically, the monitors send wireless signals to a controller that in turn operates a plurality valves based on the detected information. These systems typically employ valves that are hard wired for electrical control by the controller. The sensors are normally powered by conventional batteries or solar cells.